Legitimizing ESS

“Big Science” is a broad term that can be associated with research projects as different as the Manhattan Project, the Hubble Telescope and the CERN laboratory in Geneva. While the research produced by these projects is vastly different, they have in common the fact that they all involve huge budgets, big facilities, complex instrumentation, years of planning, and large multidisciplinary teams of researchers.

In “Legitimizing ESS”, the authors examine the complexity of the cultural, social, and political processes from which and in which Big Science develops. They do so by focusing upon the planning and development of the European Spallation Source (ESS), which is to be located in Lund in southern Sweden. Together, the chapters represent a variety of perspectives highlighting the complexity of the processes that are integral to Big Science. Accordingly, this volume examines the very different roles Big Science may be given in different contexts: locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, as well as historically.

“Legitimizing ESS” is based on the research of scholars from Lund University in the disciplines of information studies, art history and visual studies, ethnology, gender studies, geography, history of ideas and sciences, media and communication, philosophy, and policy research.